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Supporting and Celebrating Denvers Arts and Culture

Denver has a rich history of arts and culture dating back to our indigenous peoples and the first Spanish settlers in Colorado. Colorado’s culturally rich roots are the foundation for our vibrant community of painters, sculptors, actors and musicians. Our city is home to the second largest performing arts complex in the world, the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. The Denver Art Museum houses some of the world’s most valuable collections (continue reading…)

How To Be a Significantly Better Business Leader in Just One Day

In a lifetime spent coaching business leaders, I’ve learned a simple truth: leaders develop differently over the short-, medium- and long-term.
Specifically, I’ve discovered that while there are obvious leadership skills and behaviors that require months — even years — to develop, there are also simple, short-term actions which any leader can take immediately, and which will dramatically improve their performance.
Here are the seven most impactful of those short-term actions which, taken together, will significantly improve your leadership in just one day:
1. Cancel a meeting | If you’re a leader in business, you’re almost certainly over-scheduled. If you work in a large organization, probably chronically so (continue reading…)

Citizens United Will Be Overturned by Unions

Citizens United is not the last word on corporate speech. In the Citizens United vs. FEC decision, the Court of the Land, narrowly controlled by a majority of conservative judges, overruled the most recent lower court judgments on the issue of corporate rights to political speech. It will take time to sort it out with a likely Amendment to the Constitution, but we don’t have much time (continue reading…)

Mets The Effect of the Media

In late November 2010, I attended a discussion panel featuring renowned sportscaster Bob Costas in which he and three other panelists discussed the current and future state of sports. (Full discussion can be seen here.) In response to what is most different about the world of sports today as compared to previous generations, all the panelists unanimously agreed that it was the role the media plays in sports. Said Bob Costas, “Watch ESPN from noon until five. There are a half dozen or more shows which take the same ten or twelve topics, just with different panelists, and they present the same questions, all of which are ginned up to be more and more provocative (continue reading…)

Could a SendaiSized Quake Hit the US

The massive tremors and ensuing tsunami that devastated Japan earlier this month was an order of magnitude more destructive than anything that has hit the continental Unites States in historical times. But seismologists say that a similar event could well strike here. In fact, it’s only a matter of time. And compared to Japan, we’re far less prepared to deal with the consequences.
The danger zone is not California (continue reading…)

Teaching to the Test

Spring parent-teacher conferences were held this morning at the school where I teach and my belief, that in my dozen years as a teacher I had heard everything, was shattered to the core.
“My son is worried about his scores,” a mother told me. I quickly reassured her she had nothing to worry about. Her son, who moved into the school district midway through the fall semester, has a solid A in my English class and is a skilled writer.
“He got A’s in all of his classes,” the mother told me.
I was having a hard time understanding the problem.
“He can’t figure out why he doesn’t do better on the ACUITY tests.”
“The ACUITY tests?”
“He received a C on the first one he took,” she said. “I told him to take his time on it last time and he made a B (continue reading…)

Does Connecticut Have What it Takes to Go All the Way

This season has been pleasantly surprising for a UConn team that, going into the 2010-2011 season was young and unrecognized. UConn immediately established itself as a top 25 team by winning the Maui Invitational, where they upset Michigan State, a team that had a number of players back from last year’s Final Four team, and Kentucky, which was also regarded as one of the top teams in the country. Over the course of the rest of the regular season, UConn had convincing out-of-conference wins against Tennessee and Texas and strong in-conference wins against Georgetown, Villanova, West Virginia, Marquette and Cinncinati. The college basketball world was shocked when UConn won the Big East Tournament in historic fashion by winning 5 games in 5 days (continue reading…)

Green News Report March 22 2011 Audio

TWITTER: @GreenNewsReport.
The ‘GNR’ is also now available on your cell phone via Stitcher Radio’s mobile app!.
IN TODAY’S RADIO REPORT: Not out of the woods yet: Japan’s nuclear and humanitarian crisis continues as electricity returns to the Fukushima nuclear plant which remains precariously on edge while radiation poisoning is found in milk, vegetables and sea water — but Japan’s wind farms come to the rescue and new nuke reviews are set for US plants; PLUS: Surprise! A new 100-mile oil slick spotted in the Gulf of Mexico … All that and more in today’s Green News Report!
Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.
IN ‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (see links below): New tech could make desalination portable, cheaper; Delay in coal plant rules cost thousands of lives; Record rains hit Philipines, cause more flooding in Australia; German town where recycling really pays; US Chamber of Commerce: “The gang that couldn’t lobby straight”; New UK plastic recycling plant takes all sorts; How not to change a climate skeptic’s mind; Shipwreck threatens island’s penguins; Wolves could be de-listed; King Crabs Invade Antarctica for First Time in 40 Million Years …

read full news from www.huffingtonpost.com

The White House Guess List How Obama Pulled a Fast One on the American People in the Name of Transparency

President Barack Obama has won praise from the media — and from himself — for putting the White House visitor logs online. Yet the visitor logs may hide more than they reveal.
The White House is still holding back “tens of thousands” of visitor logs, according to congressional testimony last week by Tom Fitton, President of Judicial Watch, who also added that “the Obama administration is less transparent than the Bush administration.”
We also know that some of the most important presidential visitors don’t even walk into the White House. The administration meets K Street lobbyists at Caribou Coffee, and holds secret meetings in Jackson Place townhouses where there are no visitor logs.
The visitor logs that have been released are problematic, because they are simply lists of names, with no way to verify whether a specific name belongs to a particular person.
When the first names were released on Oct (continue reading…)

Pact With the Devil Thoughts on Our Nuclear Future

Nuclear power is not evil; it’s the devil. Evil of our own making can be overcome. The devil cannot be overcome, not even if we ourselves conjure him into being. This is why staking our future on nuclear power is a pact with the devil.
Spokesmen for the nuclear lobby claim nuclear reactors are safe (continue reading…)

RNC Attacks on Campaign Finance Laws Rejected by Supreme Court Again

For the second time in less than a year the Supreme Court has rejected a challenge brought by the RNC to the federal campaign finance laws and to past Supreme Court rulings.
In Cao v. FEC, the Supreme Court yesterday denied a certiorari petition to review the case and left standing a decision by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upholding the federal limits on the amount that a political party can spend in coordination with a candidate.
In doing so, the Court left standing the Supreme Court’s decision in the Colorado Republican II case (2001) that upheld the constitutionality of coordinated party spending limits.
Last June in RNC v FEC, the Court summarily affirmed a decision by a three-judge federal district court panel that upheld the constitutionality of the ban on unlimited, soft money contributions to political parties. The soft money ban is the main provision of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, also known as the McCain-Feingold law.
In doing so, the Court left standing the Supreme Court decision in the McConnell case (2003) that upheld the constitutionality of the soft money ban.
These two decisions by the Supreme Court upholding the constitutionality of important federal campaign finance laws followed the disastrous Court decision in the Citizens United case in January 2010 that struck down the long-standing ban on corporate expenditures in federal campaigns (continue reading…)

The Dangers of Nerfing the World for Our Kids

As you wait in the check-out line at the local drug store, a mother takes out a small travel bottle of hand sanitizer. She proceeds to use it not only on her own hands, but on her children’s hands as well. Or, you reach for the peanut butter to make “PB and J” for your child’s school lunch. Suddenly you remember that your child’s school has a “no-peanut” policy (continue reading…)

Having My Quinoa and Eating it Too

Last Sunday’s New York Times offered up a heaping plate of complexity to its readers in their analysis of the impact on farmers and other Bolivians of quinoa’s growing popularity with richer American and European consumers.
But while Bolivians have lived off it for centuries, quinoa remained little more than a curiosity outside the Andes for years, found in health food shops and studied by researchers — until recently.
Now demand for quinoa (pronounced KEE-no-ah) is soaring in rich countries, as American and European consumers discover the “lost crop” of the Incas. The surge has helped raise farmers’ incomes here in one of the hemisphere’s poorest countries. But there has been a notable trade-off: Fewer Bolivians can now afford it, hastening their embrace of cheaper, processed foods and raising fears of malnutrition in a country that has long struggled with it.
I can sympathize with my European and American brethren as I recently scarfed-down, and thoroughly enjoyed, a delicious plate of curried quinoa salad with mango. And yes, I am aware I just outted myself as a yuppie (what’s up, Park Slope Food Co-op!).
This convoluted tale of how the growing international appeal of an important local staple has changed life for many Bolivians gets to the difficulty of fixing our global food system (continue reading…)

Edible Radio Episode 75 Blue Plate Special with Deborah Krasner

Listen to this podcast on Edible Radio.
Blue Plate Special hosts Kurt and Christine Friese talk to Deborah Krasner, winner of just about every award there is for culinary writing including a James Beard Award, an IACP award and a Gorrmand World Cookbook Award. Krasner discusses her new book Good Meat.

read full news from www.huffingtonpost.com

Affordable Care Act Anniversary

America’s health care law, the Affordable Care Act, turns one year old on March 23rd. That’s good news for Illinois’ four-year-olds — and forty-four-year-olds, and lots of other Illinoisans too. That’s because the law imposes consumer protections on the hugely unregulated health insurance industry, and promises to cover over half of the uninsured by allowing states to create insurance marketplaces that provide transparent, comprehensive, affordable health plan choices; makes federal subsidies available to ensure middle class families won’t break the bank to pay for their plans, and expands Medicaid to low-income adults.
Illinois’ leaders have worked hard to build a track record of success on access to health insurance coverage (continue reading…)

The Democracy Revolutions and the IsraelPalestine Conflict

For the longest time, Israeli governments have explained their resistance to Palestinian statehood by pointing to the Palestinians’ and the Arab world’s democracy deficit.
The dishonesty of that explanation has now been exposed to even the most credulous by the reaction of Israel’s government to the democratic revolutions sweeping the region. We are now told by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government that the overthrow of Tunisia’s and Egypt’s rulers and the challenges to other regional autocrats, whose regimes provided Israel with a certain stability by repressing forcefully popular Arab anger over Israel’s occupation policies, no longer allows Israel to accede to risky “concessions” that a peace accord entails.
So that while until now it was the region’s democratic deficit that supposedly prevented Israel from ending its occupation, now it is the region’s surfeit of democracy that stands in its way (continue reading…)

20 Questions From a Poet and a Profit

1. Laron Profit: As much as I loved the documentary on the Fab Five, was I the only person who thought it was incomplete because we never got to hear from Chris Webber on several different issues, including the timeout he called and Ed Martin?
2. Etan Thomas: I thought the documentary on the Fab Five was great and I thought Grant Hill’s response was wonderful. I can only pray that my kids talk about be with that much pride (continue reading…)

Jon Stewart Not Intimidated by the Lobby

For several years now Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show has shown himself to be the only major media figure to fearlessly challenge the official “line” on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Repeatedly, he has slammed the occupation and has even mocked the pretensions of AIPAC which (along with the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee) works hard to keep media figures, like Members of Congress, from addressing the conflict in an honest way.
Last night, Stewart did it again. He and Daily Show correspondent John Oliver did a routine in which they described America’s hypocrisy in addressing human rights disasters (like the one in Libya). Their point was that in order to get U.S (continue reading…)

Arizonas Witch Hunt of MexicanEthnic Studies Begins This Week

Only days after the Arizona state legislature voted for punishing budget cuts in education, the now infamous witch hunt and audit of Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican American/Ethnic Studies program is readying to commence. Price tag: An estimated $170,000.
In a blistering letter yesterday, Tucson attorney Richard Martinez warned the backpedaling TUSD superintendent John Pedicone that the audit “lacks any legal basis,” and “should immediately cease and desist.” Representing the Mexican American Studies teachers and the Save Ethnic Studies organization in Tucson, Martinez called the investigation a “violation of federal mandates set forth in the Family, Education and Privacy Rights Act of 1974,” among other abuses, and called on Pedicone to “confirm without delay that TUSD’s cooperation will cease immediately or at a minimum comport with all applicable legal mandates.”
Only two months ago, the newly hired Pedicone had referred to Arizona’s notorious HB211 law as “unconstitutional.” If found in violation of the law, which bans any studies that “promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, promote resentment of a particular race or class of people, are designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group or advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals,” TUSD could lose an estimated $36 million in funding (continue reading…)

How Do You Spell Democracy

I’ll never forget the wrinkled face of a frustrated voter in a schoolyard in the town of Hinche, Haiti.
Each line told a different story of the hardship he faced — corrupt governments, poverty, an earthquake, the painfully slow dispersal of aid and now a cholera epidemic. Yet, at noon-hour on that hot, tension-filled November day, he still turned up to cast a ballot for a new president and a new future.
Sadly, I never learned his name — I’m not sure he did either.
“I can’t read this,” he said, uncomfortably handing his voter’s card to an election official.
The official sounded frustrated as he said, “J–your name begins with J.” Then, he waved the man off towards one of the handwritten lists tacked to classroom doors around the schoolyard indicating who could vote at what booth (continue reading…)

Libya Makes Case for Lower Military Spending

As these things go, the early days of the U.S. intervention in Libya have been a costly undertaking, as might be expected when U.S. forces are launching cruise missiles at Libyan targets at over $1 million a pop. Costs for the first day surely exceeded $100 million (continue reading…)

Common Sense and Jeb Bushs Seismic Path to Teacher Merit Pay

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush writes in a recent op-ed about the new teacher evaluation system just enacted by the Florida legislature. The law will link teacher jobs to student standardized test scores. He praises the move as “forging a seismic path for modernizing the teaching profession nationwide.”
Wow. Sure, Jeb’s kinda right (continue reading…)

Joseph Maraachli – Tracheotomy for endoflife row baby

Is New Atheism a Religion

It’s a question that comes up and in fact I have been asked it a couple of times by new atheists themselves, worrying that they are being tarred with the same brush as Catholics and Evangelicals. It was a question that crossed my mind when I read one of the responses to my recent piece on Darwinism and the problem of evil. One of the junior new atheists — that is to say, not one of the big four of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris — took extreme umbrage to my picking on him (even more umbrage at my not naming him by name) and my suggesting that absolute reality might not correspond exactly to his worldview.
The point is that there was a bitterness about his response that I associate with religious differences — the implication that, because I did not agree with him, I was not just wrong but immoral (continue reading…)